Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:

• The Big Read: Perplexity’s ‘newbie CEO’ hopes to dodge legal threats, Google competition

• The Top 5: Best tools for introducing AI to kids

• Plus: A dance with the dead; a delightful doomsday clock; and a data nerd fashionista.

Six years ago, Patrick Soon-Shiong, a Los Angeles billionaire, spent a half-billion dollars on a valuable asset: the Los Angeles Times. Sure, he wasn’t buying The New York Times, but he was still picking up a venerable publication with nearly four dozen Pulitzer Prizes to its name. You could imagine how a local billionaire such as Soon-Shiong could help the paper maintain its value—even if it was implausible that he might ever sell it at a much higher price. The days when newspapers went up in value ended around the same time that “Peanuts” disappeared from the funnies. 

Now, as I understand investing, when a person commits such a large sum to a purchase, they generally try to at least maintain the value of that pricey thing, since at some point they may want to resell it. It’s hard to picture someone buying a Monet just to splash ketchup onto the water lilies. Or leaving a prize racehorse to stand out in the Kentucky muck all night.

I say all this because while Soon-Shiong may not actively be trying to ruin the Times, he’s nonetheless doing a fair job at inadvertently ruining his expensive acquisition. Since he bought the paper, it has suffered through an ongoing staff exodus, layoffs and tension between the top editors and Soon-Shiong. This week, the newsroom fell into fresh tumult over his insistence that the paper shouldn’t endorse a presidential candidate. The editorials editor quit in protest. (After I initially wrote this column, an incredibly similar drama started to play out at The Washington Post, too.)

Before Soon-Shiong chips away at the Times any further, he should sell it: Goldman Sachs or Aryeh Bourkoff at LionTree should’ve been his phone calls yesterday. I’m not saying this as a journalism purist aghast at editorial fracas. I’m suggesting it as a matter of dollars and, well, good sense. 

Who might buy the Times? I can think of a bunch of wealthy Southern California liberals who have the funds and the inclination to acquire a trophy that could double as a public good (and who certainly wouldn’t object to a Kamala Harris endorsement). But the paper is going to be less valuable to them the more Soon-Shiong tarnishes its brand and editorial independence. He should sell it while he still has a chance to recoup some of his initial investment. 

It’s tough to imagine a scenario in which Soon-Shiong doesn’t want to sell the paper at some point, since he doesn’t seem to fall into the camp of journalism’s true believers, like The New York Times’ Sulzberger family or the Grahams, who used to own The Post. (Besides, by one account, which Soon-Shiong disputed, he already considered a sale in 2021.) And yet every action he takes seems to do nothing but drive the potential sales price down: It’s a little like watching Elon Musk run X.  

Maybe Soon-Shiong would have better luck with racehorses. They’re certainly easier to tame than many journalists.—Abram Brown

The Big Read 

Legal Threats, Google Competition Loom Over Perplexity’s ‘Newbie CEO’

Chutzpah can get a person quite far, and that’s much of what seems to be propelling Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. He has become a top villain for the media after Forbes magazine accused him of plagiarizing its journalism for a new product offered by his AI startup. Meanwhile, News Corp has sued him, while the New York Times Co. sent him a cease-and-desist letter over the same issue. 

Srinivas was rather blase about the whole matter when he sat down with our Kevin McLaughlin. “I’m a newbie CEO trying to learn here,” said the 30-year-old co-founder, who has had no trouble convincing investors like Jeff Bezos and Sequoia Capital to fund his endeavor.  

The media companies pounding on his gates may be the least of his concerns. His greatest task is trying to find a successful revenue model for Perplexity, which has waded into a sticky situation: It sells a subscription AI search engine, but that model has been tried before—with limited luck. So Srinivas is hoping to introduce an entirely new type of digital advertising: placing ads next to AI search query responses that could sell for as much as 10 times more than traditional online ads. Srinivas will need to convince marketers he has a product worth such a markup—and somehow manage to do it before Google catches up to him.

The Top 5

Our Favorite Tools for Sensibly Introducing Kids to AI

The further we get into the AI era, the clearer it is that kids are getting their hands all over this technology at a very young age. But we haven’t thought as much as we should about how to usher these impressionable minds into this frontier land that can be both wonderful and disconcertingly unsafe. With that in mind, our Paris Martineau has assembled a list of the best ways to use with kids as you usher them into this latter-day Oz. 

Abram Brown, editor of The Information’s Weekend section, had a quiet drink with Leon Panetta last night. You can reach him at [email protected] or find him on X.

Attending: The Merry Muertos

Shortly before the pandemic, I was walking through Panteón Civil de Dolores in Mexico City, the largest cemetery in Mexico, and feeling a bit overwhelmed by the number of candles, photos, treats and decorations that adorned thousands of the altars and sarcophagi.

Día de los Muertos, the annual Mexican holiday for remembering deceased loved ones, had occurred a couple months earlier, but the physical remnants of the celebration were still visible in every direction. Mexicans embrace the subject of death more than just about any culture, while most of us gladly avoid the topic, and there was something deeply moving about the way families had committed so much time and energy to honoring their loved ones.

Halloween is right around the corner—and yes, feel free to pursue the usual costume house parties, with options like zombie Sam Altman or a sexy LLM—but I’ll be checking out the Mission District’s annual Día de los Muertos celebration. The daylong Potrero del Sol Park event on Nov. 2 will feature people creating their own altars in the morning (signups still open!) and live performances in the evening, which in the past has featured a procession down 24th Street with percussion bands and Thriller-like dance performances. 

If building altars, saying prayers, drinking tequila and dancing aren’t your jam, at least consider getting your face painted with skull-like La Catrina makeup—good for scaring unsuspecting children down to their bones.—Josh Koehn

Downloading: An Endearing Doomsday Clock

Each day, I get a message on my phone that reads: “Don’t forget, you’re going to die.” It’s from WeCroak, an app that isn’t as morbid as it seems. (I swear!) 

It’s inspired by a Bhutanese folk saying: “To be a happy person, one must contemplate death five times daily.” The idea is that regularly acknowledging your own mortality can help shift your day-to-day perspective of life, making it easier to let go of the things that don’t matter and focus on the things that do. 

The app itself is very simple. Five times a day, it sends users a notification reminding them of their impending demise. (The timing of the notifications are random, much like death itself!) Clicking the notification will show a quote about the human experience—sometimes inspirational, sometimes not.

I’ve had the app installed for about six years now, and I find it oddly calming in moments of anxiety or strife. Car cuts you off on your way to work? “Don’t forget, you’re going to die.” Stub your toe on a coffee table? “Don’t forget, you’re going to die.” Feeling stressed by impending deadlines? “Don’t forget, you’re going to die.”—Paris Martineau

Following: A Data-Cruncher’s Wardrobe

Plaid, burgundy and Prada are having a moment. Mary Janes and fur are on the way out. I don’t just know this from looking around the streets of New York: I know this from data and science. Or should I say, I know it from compulsively refreshing @databutmakeitfashion, one of my favorite Instagram accounts. 

The account is run by Madé Lapuerta, a Harvard computer science major turned JPMorgan Chase vice president. She builds her own AI recognition models to track the ups and downs of colors, designers, materials and amorphous trends like “quiet luxury” and “balletcore.” Think of it like Miranda Priestly’s cerulean sweater monologue for the Gen Z era.

Fortunately, Lapuerta doesn’t take herself quite as seriously as Ms. Priestly (see her recent tongue-in-cheek argument that workwear trends are responsible for boosting the S&P 500 performance). Still, her account will help you do some important due diligence before making your next fashion investment.—Julia Black

Final Thought

The more you know.